Authors: M. Hoehl, S. Kurtz, E. Ohlebusch
This is the homepage of the software tool MGA. What follows is the abstract of the accompanying paper.

Motivation

To allow a direct comparison of the genomic DNA sequences of sufficiently similar organisms,
there is an urgent need for software tools that can align more than two genomic sequences.

Results

We developed new algorithms and a software tool ``Multiple Genome Aligner''
(MGA for short) that efficiently computes multiple genome alignments of large,
closely related DNA sequences. For example, it can align 85% percent of the complete
genomes of six human adenoviruses (average length 35,305 bp.) in 159 seconds. An alignment
of 74% of the complete genomes of three of strains of E.coli (lengths: 5,528,445; 5,498,450; 4,639,221 bp.)
is produced in 30 minutes.

Availability

The software MGA is available free of charge for non-commercial research institutions.

New Results

We improved MGA by incorporating a faster chaining algorithm. This reduces the time needed for aligning
the three of strains of E.coli to less than 21 minutes. The six human adenoviruses can be aligned in
142 seconds. Furthermore, using new parameters (-l 10 7 5 4) MGA is now capable of aligning 92% in 198 seconds.